Teaching your prekindergarten students about building through reading and writing helps to strengthen their understanding of the topic and enhance their English/Language Arts skills.
There are many books that you can bring into the classroom and read aloud to your students. Some titles include "Building Machines," "Construction Zone" and "Dozer to the Rescue."
After you read aloud "The Three Little Pigs" to your class, have them examine the three materials used to build the three different houses in the story: straw, sticks and bricks. By feeling the materials or building small structures out of them, students learn why bricks are the best material out of the three to build with.
If you have a sensory table in your class, fill it with sand and different construction toys, such as shovels, trucks and bulldozers and allow your students to manipulate them.
Bring old blueprints into the classroom and teach students how they are used and why.
A lot is learned through art in prekindergarten, as art provides children with a medium to express themselves.
Have your students create their own blueprints. After they have studied some real blueprints, let them use blue paper, white chalk and rulers to create their own.
Let them use Popsicle sticks and glue to build their own buildings. Let them decorate them with paint, markers and stickers.
With paint and construction toys students can create modern art. Let them roll the wheels of the toys in paint and roll them across paper.
Dramatic play is an important teaching tool in prekindergarten as it allows students to replicate what they see adults doing in a safe environment. In the dramatic play area of your classroom, provide students with toy bricks, construction hats, yellow and black construction tape, building toys and safety goggles. Using these materials, children can pretend that they are construction workers and builders, allowing them to have first-hand experience with the concept.
In prekindergarten, music is frequently used to teach new concepts as the repetitive and rhyming lyrics help to reinforce. Some songs that you can use in your building theme include "Johnny's Hammer" and "Noisy Nails."
Invite a construction worker to come to your class during your building theme to talk to your students about his job. Ask him to bring along some of the gear that he wears and materials that he may use. Children can learn a lot from someone who actually works in the field, not to mention that they will have a lot of fun with their visitor.